Do you recall the good old days when Venom was a supervillain and a thorn in the side of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Well, that was a long time ago, of course, and these days Venom is a hero and a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

To make a long story short, the Venom Symbiote went through a couple of hands before war vet Flash Thompson inherited the alien suit, became a government agent (aka a good guy) and joined our beloved space idiots.

More Venom

Flash got his revamped Venom armor suit in yesterday's Guardians of the Galaxy #23 as our galactic adventurers journeyed to the “Planet of the Symbiotes.”

Artist Valerio Schiti had this to say about the reasons behind the brand-new design for the Symbiote Soldier:

“I suppose that the main reason for this change is the new readers—at least that’s what [GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY writer] Brian Bendis said! The new generations of readers have a totally different idea of Venom; most of them don’t even know that once he was a bad guy. In this moment nobody perceives him like a monster, everybody knows that he’s a hero, a good guy with a super cool costume that can do amazing things so why don’t we concentrate on them? Brian noticed that new way of thinking about the character and imagined this totally different version. And everybody knows that if there’s someone with a great intuition for what is cool, that man is Brian Michael Bendis.

I looked at the work of Mike Zeck and Todd McFarlane mostly for the size and the main idea: a big guy with a white spider on the chest. That was a perfect and powerful design indeed and I wanted to keep the final design as close as possible to that look.

I also added some details coming from sci-fi anime and movies like “Ghost in the Shell” or “Tron” because this time we wanted to show a “space Venom,” a proper member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. But these are small details; the main thing is still the white spider.”

Have a look:

What do you guys think about Marvel’s Venom redesign? Is the new armor suit a hit or a miss for you?